Gatehouse E03 Prequels: Groceries & Alone
by thejollydoctor
Summary: Groceries: After an exhausting adventure, Roland decides to stay at the Gatehouse and have a 'normal day'. - Alone: Jenny is alone in the Gatehouse while Roland visits his parents. Her overwhelming boredom soon transforms into a feeling of dread.
1. Groceries

It was late afternoon in Caerdid, but Roland had only been awake a few minutes prior to leaving his bedroom. His last adventure with Jenny had worn him out completely, and he refused to go anywhere until he'd had at least one fully normal day. What was considered normal to him, Jenny had no idea, but she figured it didn't involve time ripples or atmospheric disturbances of any kind, so she decided to keep her latest observations to herself.

"Just for today, and then I can tell him all about it," she thought as she peeled a banana.

Roland entered the kitchen wearing a flannel robe and fuzzy brown slippers. He shuffled to the fridge and exclaimed in surprise when he saw the contents. "Jenny, how did we afford a _whole gallon _of milk? I know for a fact this wasn't Montgomery's."

"Oh, I went back to a little grocery store in the twenty-first century," Jenny said, casually taking another bite of banana. "You wouldn't believe how _cheap _everything was!"

Roland took notice of the banana in Jenny's hand for the first time. "Is that from the twenty-first century too?"

"No, it's actually from a banana grove that was in Villengard about a millennium ago. There's some more on the counter over there if you want one." She pointed over Roland's left shoulder and took the last bite of her banana.

"Um, no thanks," Roland grumbled. "Do we have any modern Earth food?"

"Good grief, no," Jenny retorted. "You can buy a whole store in the thirtieth century for what it costs to buy a box of raisins nowadays. Literally! What would be the point?"

Roland decided to ignore the fact that the waffles in the freezer were ancient and eat them anyway. "Perhaps tomorrow can be my normal day," he thought as he watched the heat rise from what used to be Isaiah Montgomery's toaster. "I could visit my parents and eat normal food cooked in rightfully purchased appliances."


	2. Alone

**Alone**

It was silent in the laboratory. One lamp was on by the computer desk, dimly lighting the large room. The space shuttle in the center of the room blocked part of this light, creating a shadowy place in one corner- the corner where Jenny sat. She had tried to read, hoping it would keep her mind off the fact that Roland would be visiting his parents for the whole day, but the story wasn't half as interesting as her own adventures and it soon became predictable.  
She had gone for a walk a few hours before, but it started to rain and she had to run back inside. She had counted the seconds between thunderclaps until the storm passed by.  
"Bored," she declared, to no one in particular. She was alone, after all. Nobody was listening.  
In the opposite corner of the room a light began blinking on the IRCM, or 'time module' as she and Roland had begun calling it. She stood up to investigate and noticed a bunch of wiggly lines on the interface, indicating some sort of temporal activity in the area. The readings almost exactly resembled those of the previous day, when she had briefly considered telling Roland. She had put it off because he wanted to have 'one normal day'- a day without time travel and freaky anomalies.  
One thing was different this time, she observed. The lines were spaced closer together and flared on ocassion, almost as if detecting a pulse.  
"The time vortex does have a current," Jenny thought. "I suppose it might have a pulse as well."  
She supposed she could investigate. A quick jump into the vortex might reveal the problem, but then, it might also be hazardous. Before she had a chance to make up her mind, the readings changed. Instead of the horizontal lines it showed before, the waves became vertical, and moved up and down in circular shapes.  
"What..." Jenny stared with a baffled expression at the screen. The readings were supposed to detect anomalies and their size, not dance about like jumping bubbles. What was this even supposed to mean?  
"Alright, that's it," she said as she pressed the activation button. The time window that hung on the wall in front of her shuttle changed in appearance from a glossy mirror to a swirling vortex. Immediately it struck her that the vortex was dark and frothy like a storm cloud rather than a sharp, purple like it normally was.  
Her experience had no idea what this could mean, but her instinct knew right away. Someone, somewhere in the vast expansion of time and space, had unleashed a paradox.


End file.
